


Tiny Dancer

by singingaboutwishing



Series: Dina is Sad and So Am I [5]
Category: The Band's Visit - Yazbek/Moses
Genre: Dancing, Gen, Nostalgia, Sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:55:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24104002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singingaboutwishing/pseuds/singingaboutwishing
Summary: A series of (literal) snapshots of Dina growing up in ballet shoes.
Series: Dina is Sad and So Am I [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1585714
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	Tiny Dancer

**Author's Note:**

> betaed by the absolutely lovely allonsytotumblr . please check out her work!!

It takes nearly two hours, but Dina finally finds it.

It’s dusty and a bit worn, but it’s there.

She opens the photo album and smiles a little bit.

In the first photo, she’s four and her smile is so big it could split her face in half. She’s wearing a tutu and her very first pair of ballet shoes at her recital.

Dina remembers this day so clearly. She was so excited to dance with the big girls. She pointed her toes as hard as she could and tried to be as graceful as they were.

She turns the page.

She’s seven now, and fresh out of class. Even though the photo is grainy, she can see how the corkscrew curls of her hair were coming out of her bun. As she grew, her hair had only gotten, well, bigger, but she was determined to have the perfect ballerina bun.

She’s nine in the next photo, arms wrapped around her best friend. Dina and Aviva could have been twins with their delicate features and wild, curly hair. They were exactly alike, too— both silly and loud outside of dance, but the second they stepped foot in the studio, they were hyper-focused on ballet.

Dina remembers how their teacher sang their praises to their parents after the recital. _They just set such good examples for the little girls,_ she’d said, and _they have so much natural talent, please keep them in ballet!_ Dina had just beamed, unable to imagine anything taking her away from dance.

Aviva’s family moved away that summer, and so they became she. Dina never saw her again.

She thumbs through a few more pages before stopping. 

She’s thirteen, her first year of pointe shoes. It took her a month to get the hang of even walking in them, but by the end of the year, she was piqué-ing rings around the other girls.

That year was tough. She had had no close friends after Aviva left. Sure, all the girls were friendly, but Dina had formed no real connections. That year, though, they all seemed to turn against her, leaving her out of get-togethers, whispering behind her back, not really talking to her at all— the unnecessary cruelty of young girls. She remembers it all too well.

Dina ignored them as best she could, using her extra time to practice and practice until her body ached, but by the end of the year, her movements were perfect.

It was worth it. She was offered a solo for the recital. 

She shone.

It didn’t help her social situation, but she really was happy.

The picture is their class picture. She’s on the end.

How appropriate, Dina thinks.

She flips the page.

She’s fifteen. It’s an action shot— she’s in mid-arabesque with only one other girl in frame. Dina notices how identical they look; the exact degree of their legs seems the same, their arms float above their heads just so.

The girl was Riva. Dina’s only other good friend. Her family had moved into Bet Hatikva that year. Both girls had been considering a ballet conservatory, as the local studio could only offer so much.

Riva’s family was affluent enough to pay her tuition, and so off she went. Dina was accepted, but could not get enough scholarship money to go, and her family was far from wealthy. She stayed, but did not quit.

She kept in touch with Riva a little bit. Riva worked her way through the conservatory, danced professionally for a year, and then got married and had kids. As far as Dina knows, she does not dance anymore.

She flips the page.

There sits a seventeen-year-old Dina, laughing in the dressing room after a performance. Swan Lake, she remembers. She danced as Odette. Their production value was quite low. They had no male dancers, so girls had to play boys, and several parts were omitted altogether due to lack of proper resources. It didn’t matter to Dina. She was finally, finally getting the chance to dance a real role. During the show she inhabited the enchanted, glittering world of Tchaikovsky, far away from Bet Hatikva, where a woman could be a swan, and love conquered everything.

She arrives at the last photo. Dina, age eighteen. She stands onstage, about to curtsy. Her white tulle skirt makes her look like an angel, as does the radiant smile on her face. This was her only performance not for her dance studio. She had worked up the nerve to audition in the closest city, and landed it. Every day she took a two-hour bus ride there and back for rehearsals. It was worth it, though. She danced as Giselle, her dream role since she was ten. It felt like there was no acting required, she simply _was_ Giselle. If Dina closes her eyes, she can still hear the audience’s standing ovation from when she curtsied on opening night.

That was her last performance. Dina was eighteen, and the country’s mandatory military service came knocking. Her parents had gotten sick during her time in the army, and both of them with different illnesses that proved equally deadly in the end. She spent her weekends caring for them, her weekdays now filled with a very different kind of training. Gone were her pointe shoes and leotards; now it was combat boots and uniforms. She was too exhausted to even think about dance. Four months after she was released, they died, leaving her with a void in her heart and a directionless life. 

Dina stares at this picture and wants to cry a little.

She loved dancing. She still catches herself standing in first position while making coffee and doing toe raises while she brushes her teeth.

She could have kept dancing after her parents died, moved somewhere else with bright lights and opportunities, but then she met Katzir. She put all her dreams on hold for a short, ill-advised marriage with a succinct divorce, and her life went downhill from there.

And now? It is too late to go back to her beloved craft. All of her drive, all of her motivation is gone. She is no longer flexible. Her already worn-out pointe shoes have been decaying in a cardboard box for the past twenty years. She loves the _idea_ of dancing and treasures the memories, but she knows deep down that starting again is no longer feasible. 

Besides, who would she dance for? Her couch? The ballet school is long closed down- Bet Hatikva is even smaller and sadder than it was in her childhood. She wonders briefly if it was like this all along, or if her childhood naïveté had given the desert the mirage of life. 

She feels a pang in her heart for the little girls who will never get to experience the joy of leaping—no, _flying_ —across those worn, wooden floors. 

Dina flips back to the first photo and looks at her tiny self smiling out from the page. She wishes that she hadn’t let this little girl down.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

Then she really begins to cry.


End file.
